The MosquitoD. H. Lawrence(1885 - 1930)

When did you start your tricksMonsieur?What do you stand on such high legs for?Why this length of shredded shankYou exaltation?Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwardsAnd weigh no more than air as you alight upon me,Stand upon me weightless, you phantom?I heard a woman call you the Winged VictoryIn sluggish Venice.You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.How can you put so much devilryInto that translucent phantom shredOf a frail corpus?Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legsHow you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air,A nothingness.Yet what an aura surrounds you;Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind.That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic:Invisibility, and the anaesthetic powerTo deaden my attention in your direction.But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer.Queer, how you stalk and prowl the airIn circles and evasions, enveloping me,Ghoul on wingsWinged Victory.Settle, and stand on long thin shanksEyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware,You speck.I hate the way you lurch off sideways into airHaving read my thoughts against you.Come then, let us play at unawares,And see who wins in this sly game of bluff.Man or mosquito.You don't know that I exist, and I don't know that you exist.Now then!It is your trumpIt is your hateful little trumpYou pointed fiend,Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you:It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.Why do you do it?Surely it is bad policy.They say you can't help it.If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent.But it sounds so amazingly like a sloganA yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.Blood, red bloodSuper-magicalForbidden liquor.I behold you standFor a second enspasmed in oblivion,Obscenely ecstasiedSucking live bloodMy blood.Such silence, such suspended transport,Such gorging,Such obscenity of trespass.You staggerAs well as you may.Only your accursed hairy frailtyYour own imponderable weightlessnessSaves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching.Away with a paean of derisionYou winged blood-drop.Can I not overtake you?Are you one too many for meWinged Victory?Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makesBeside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

The Mosquito by D. H. Lawrence was first published in his book "Birds, Beasts and Flowers" in 1923. This collection is from the peak of Lawrence's poetic exploits. All of the poems are from his experiences in life, although "The Mosquito" is the only one that deals with insects.

D. H. Lawrence

Born David Herbert Lawrence in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire on September 11, 1885. He lived a fairly uninteresting life until the death of his brother in 1902. After that he began to excel in school and became a student teach, this is also the first time he was published. He fell in love with Frieda Weekley, ended up getting exiled and spent the next years traveling throughout Europe with her eventually moving to Taos, New Mexico. It was during this time that "Birds, Beasts and Flowers" was published. D. H. Lawrence had a long history of sickness, from multiple bouts of pneumonia to the tuberculosis which would kill him. It isn't surprising that he would write about the Mosquito during his travels through the world.

Mosquito

Mosquitoes are small flies, members of the family Culicidae. They are known as a nuisance and vectors of disease. The female of many species are blood eaters that feed on the blood of vertebrates. Some of them transmit harmful human diseases such as malaria.

Mosquitoes go through four stages, egg, larva, pupa and adult. In most species the female will lay her eggs in stagnant waters. The first three stages are mostly aquatic and typically last from one to two weeks although a more typical period of development would be forty or more days. Mosquitoes that live in regions that have freezing or waterless seasons will spend part of the year in diapause, in which they delay their development and then carry on when the weather gets warmer or the water comes back. Once they reach adulthood they can live for as little as a week to as long as several months.

Males form large swarms and the females will fly into the swarms to mate. The males feed on nectar while the female hunts out blood. Once she is full she will rest while the eggs are developed and the blood is digested. Once the eggs have developed she will lay them and repeat the cycle. The abdomen of a female mosquito can hold three times its own weight in blood, sometimes they will become so bloated that they can no longer fly.

The saliva of the mosquito works as an anticoagulant making it so the blood will not clot and flow freely into the female's proboscis. This saliva is also the main route which pathogens are passed on. One promising application for mosquito saliva molecules is in response to heart-related diseases, but scientists have still not been able to find the exact functions of all the molecules.

Humans and Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes infect around 250 million people per year with malaria world wide. Each year 2 to 3 million people will die from malaria. Although that is the main disease that causes death that the mosquito is a vector of, there are thousands of others. Dengue fever is the most common cause of fever in travelers going through the tropical regions of the Americas. It is only spread through infected mosquitoes and cannot be caught from people. Other diseases that are spread from mosquitoes include, West Nile Virus, Eastern equine encephalitis virus and Lymphatic filariasis, the main cause of elephantiasis.

Some of the methods that are being used to prevent the spread of diseases include mosquito control and eradication. Disease prevention, such as vaccinations and prevention methods such as insecticides, nets and repellants. Mosquito control will include the removal of stagnant water and importation of natural predators such as dragonflies.